"THE Buccleuch family, owners of more than 240,000 acres of private land, use a shadowy Cayman Islands firm to control and sell land...

"The aristocratic estate run by Richard Scott, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch, confirmed that an offshore ownership group, Pentland Limited, acts as an offshore contact to the family’s vast land business empire."

The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, by Neil McKenna, suggests that the prime minister, the Earl of Rosebery, had a gay relationship for over two years with Viscount Drumlanrig, the older brother of Wilde's own lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

McKenna told the Sunday Times that, 'Oscar was sacrificed to save Rosebery and the Liberals.'

The book says that the Marquess of Queensbury, the father of Drumlanrig and Douglas, was so furious that both his sons were gay that he threatened to reveal the PM’s own homosexuality.

Wilde’s trial was rushed through in order to 'buy off' Queensbury and save the PM’s reputation, although Queensbury later called him 'a Jew nancy boy' and 'that bloody bugger'.

The book also suggests that the relationship between Rosebery and Drumlanrig was instrumental to Drumlanrig being made the PM`s private secretary and eventually a Lord.

The Sunday Times quotes Philip Hoare, who has himself written a biography on Wilde, as saying that McKenna’s theory was realistic, as he believed Wilde had been a political pawn.

"The Liberals saw Wilde, as it were, taking all this decadence to the suburbs. They needed to stop it."

It also mentions Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland opinion that "Queensbury had lost one son to this ‘unmentionable vice’ and didn’t want another lost."